Review 299: Damnation Spring

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Redwoods are my favorite trees, so approaching a book about cutting down these majestic giants did leave me with some trepidation. My thought was there would be an epiphany for the main characters, something with hope. It didn’t turn out that way.

Set in the late 1970s, an aging Rich and younger wife Colleen have a young son nicknamed Chub, they struggle to get by as money is always tight. Colleen is obsessed with having another child, distraught over it and she serves as a mid-wife to the small logging community, yet whenever she is around a pregnant woman, she feels anguish and longing. She lost many herself, eight all told, with the last one being the most difficult for her and Rich. He shuns her sexually now, not wanting her to become pregnant again.

Meanwhile Rich’s occupation of logging is becoming hampered by the state park and the few places left to harvest the giant redwoods they name “pumpkins”. These trees bring in the payday, as they are paid by board feet. Rich takes a chance to purchase one of the last areas of land with some trees and one really large pumpkin still standing. Without telling Colleen Rich takes out a loan, using the last of their savings as a deposit, now if he could only get a road in order to bring out the trees once downed and cut, they’d be set.

Colleen’s ex-boyfriend turns up, a scientist who’s back to help out with his mom who has cancer. He starts talking about chemicals in the water, all the spraying that is done to keep down the “weed” trees, the damage it does to animals, to people. His presence brings up questions for everyone.

The book felt belabored at times. There was too much daily detail and not enough thrust of a plot. We have short chapters with Chub’s viewpoint that don’t add very much to the story other than length. When the plot starts moving forward it then falters and stalls with more characters and situations that don’t add to the overall arch of the story. The end of the book throws in some drama that seemed unnecessary and didn’t save the book for me at all.